Frozen Chains
by Jaslyn
Summary: In the darkest of times, two girls on opposite sides of an infinite fence find hope in one another in their struggle for freedom. Dystopian AU, Elsanna
1. Prologue

_"In war news, Arendellian tank forces breach Weselton borders as they score a series of victories in our relentless push towards the enemy's stronghold…"_

Curled up against velvet cushions - the little blonde girl strikes a figure of utmost vulnerability as she keeps one eye fixed on the enormous flat-screen television showing videos of a violent tank battle. Her bright blue eyes glimmer at the fiery explosion taking place on-screen, and she averts her gaze to the two adults standing behind an imposing glass panel. The taller of the two, a man, holds a phone to his ear in silence while the woman bites her nails and stares into the mouthpiece as she tries to coax the speaker's words into her ears.

The girl's teeth begin to chatter, not from the cold - her home is as toasty and comfortable as she could've wished for - but from the fear prickling through her skin as she sees her father's grim expression deepen with each imaginary word floating through the phone. The sight of her mother as she dips her head to their kitchen's marbled counter top sends a chill down her spine, and she attempts to distract herself with the television. On it, a red-haired man in a starched white suit shouts from a podium to a crowd of people screaming and cheering at his every word.

_"How long, men and women of Arendelle, have we fought the Northern tides and paid with the blood of our children? I say unto you - the hour of victory draws near!" _

As the man thumps his fist into the wood, the girl catches a glimpse of his eyes and immediately averts her gaze from them. There was something which glowed within his eyes that never failed to make her head spin. Her skin crawled at his every word, and the near-manic state of the crowd beneath him churned the food in her belly. It was like his voice _dragged _her closer and closer to the screen with each sentence.

In search of a distraction from the man's voice and the scene playing out in the kitchen, the girl picks up a glass of chocolate milk left for her on the living room's mahogany table. She lifts the crystal tumbler to her lips and sips, her cheeks scrounging at its lukewarm temperature.

_Yuck! Hot or cold milk I like, but give me lukewarm and I'll spew you out of my mouth. _

A smirk forms on her lips as she passes the glass from hand to hand, staring at its foamy brown surface shimmering beneath the crystal chandelier. She snaps a quick glance to her parents, now hunching over the phone with worry written on their faces; oblivious to the girl having her nightly milk and cookies. Convinced of their diverted attention, she tightens her grasp on the glass until it fogs from the cold. The girl purses her lips and blows a wisp of frosty air, forming a snowflake on its surface. The glass, now dripping with condensation, passes beneath her scrutiny before she lifts it to her lips, but a raspy voice cuts her off from enjoying her chilled drink.

"_Elsa!_" the man exclaims, nearly causing her to drop the glass, "Have you been-"

Her parents, standing directly behind her, look over their shoulders at the minuscule lens perched in the corner of the ceiling. The camera flashes an ominous point of red light once, before resuming its silent overwatch over the family. He looks at his wife, slowly shaking her head with a frown plastered on her face.

"Um, Elsa, your teacher called us," the woman says, taking the ice-cold glass of milk from her daughter's hands and hiding it behind a vase of crocuses, "we need to talk-"

He leans over his wife's shoulder and whispers into her ears. Despite the shadows, Elsa makes out his lips muttering the words _not here_, before he takes her by the hand.

"How about we read you a nice bedtime story?" the man says, his booming voice filling every corner of the room.

Elsa's eyes wander to the clock; it's still half an hour to her bedtime, but she knows better than to argue with her parents when they raise their voices. _Bad things happen _- they used to say, so Elsa allows her mother to pick her up and carry her to the bedroom. The smooth, velvet-like perfume clinging to her mother's pearls nearly lulls her to sleep, and when she lays her down on her bed - it feels like she's descending into a cloud of warmth.

"Elsa," her father says, rousing the girl from her sleep, "we had a talk with Mrs Evans-"

Elsa's eyes widen at the woman's name, but she pulls the blanket over her mouth and waits for him to continue.

"She said you played with the other kids at recess, and they were throwing snowballs at each other."

Elsa nibbles on her woolen duvet, allowing her father's words to swim around in her head, before whispering, "_So?_"

Her mother looks at him, and sighs, "Elsa, it's the middle of August."

"Oh."

"Look, you can't keep going on like this," her mother says, before she drops her voice to a whisper, "_don't you know what happened to Sally?" _

Elsa bites her lower lip and remembers Sally, the girl who could run faster than all the boys and never got tired. She had golden braids which fluttered in the sun as she strode laps around the football pitch, and her green eyes glimmered with determination every time she leapt further than her during hopscotch. One day she was sitting next to Elsa and memorizing times tables, and the next day she was gone. _Just gone. _

_Disappeared. Taken. Vanished - _Few of the words grownups said to each other in whispers behind closed doors.

Sally's parents disappeared too, and another family moved into their house the same day. No one talked, no one batted an eyelid, and she would've forgotten her name if her mother hadn't brought it up.

"Sally's gone, isn't she?" Elsa mutters, and for some reason, the memory of Sally and her big toothy grin brings a tear to her eyes.

"Shh-" the woman whispers, dabbing a silk handkerchief to Elsa's eyes and pulling her into her arms, "_things like this happen._"

"You mean everything to us, Elsa. You're special to us no matter what you do," her father says, running his calloused fingers through wisps of blonde hair, "but the world is a dangerous place, and it hates people who can do special things."

"Sally- Sally was special to me too," Elsa sighs, bunching up her fingers around the woman's dress, "she- she was..._my friend._ Why did they have to take her away?"

"Please, we know it's hard for you to make friends. But you absolutely _have _to keep yourself under control - at least until you're older and we can find a place for you to go."

"I don't want to go anywhere," Elsa says, resisting the urge to sob, "what did they do to Sally?"

Elsa jams her face into her mother's chest and inhales deeply, exhaling a series of sputtered breaths.

"You'll find out when you're older, hun - although we hope from the bottom of our hearts you won't have to."

The thoughts churn inside Elsa's mind in a loop; she tries to make sense of what it means, but all the can think about is how _unfair _it is. Another question about Sally teeters on the edge of Elsa's tongue, but her father has already started for the door. When her mother lays Elsa into the sheets, it feels like _falling _to her, and the emptiness overwhelms her faster than she can cry for help.

"_No bedtime story?_" Elsa whimpers, but the door clicks shut, and the lights go off, plunging her room into a darkness lit by moonlight peeking through her curtains. Instinctively, she reaches for her snowman plushie and sobs into its polyester fabric.

"Why, Olaf, _why?_" Elsa sobs, "Why does it have to be me?"

She recoils from a chill creeping up her face, and gasps at the frozen sheet of ice covering Olaf's body where her tears had rubbed off on him. Elsa tears away the frost covering her face and Olaf, casting it from her bed and shuddering at the clattering noise it makes on her bedroom floor.

"I don't want any of this," Elsa whispers, pulling Olaf into her arms, "I don't want to be special, or smart, or pretty - I just want _a friend._"

In the darkness, Elsa imagines Olaf's twiggy hands reaching around her waist in a hug. After countless times checking that they weren't real, she knows the feeling is nothing more than a figment of her imagination - but the sheer _loneliness _gnawing away at her heart rages so fiercely tonight, Elsa allows herself to believe it's real.

"I love you, Olaf," Elsa whimpers, "_you'll be my friend won't you?_"

Wracked by solitude and sorrow, Elsa fails to notice the light streaming through her window glowing brighter with each passing second. In the hallway, the chime of a grandfather clock resonating through the house masks the sound of scampering boots. Still, the little blonde girl presses her face into the pillow, hugging her snowman plushie to herself and hoping that sleep will come and steal away the loneliness which had invaded her heart tonight.

It isn't until the light flooding through her window burns brighter than daylight itself, that Elsa rouses from her sleep and rubs her eyes from the glare in her room. The crunching noise outside the windows fails to stir her from her drowsiness, but the sight of her father barging into her room does.

"_Elsa! Elsa!_" he yells, yanking her mother with one hand and scooping her to his chest, "We have to go!"

"What-"

"_Now!_" her mother shrieks, ending any opposition from her.

Sweat drips from his jaw, splashing on Elsa's cheek and running down her neck. The sudden buzz of activity sends a rush of blood to her head; she sees blurry silhouettes passing the windows in her living room as they pass the front door.

"No, no, _no!_" the woman exclaims, jamming her weight before the front door and stopping her husband from advancing, "They're outside!"

"Through the lawn!" he whispers, whipping around on his heels and sprinting through the house. The chopping noise of helicopter blades coupled with hideous barking of dogs and men sends thumping spurts of pain into Elsa's ears. As the family reaches the backdoor, the man sets Elsa down on her feet, and she struggles to stand up straight.

"_Idun!_" he growls, pushing Elsa into her arms, "When I open the backdoor, go into the lawn's bomb shelter and lock yourself in there."

"But they'll find her!" she scowls.

"No! _You go in there alone! _They'll waste their time breaking into it!" he growls, before turning to Elsa and lowering his voice, "Elsa, I need you listen-"

"But daddy-"

"Shh! Listen to me!" he commands, and Elsa's lips purse into a thin line as she takes in her father's instructions, "You're small enough to crawl beneath the hedge, I want you to go our neighbor's house. But don't wait there, leave as soon as its safe, and stay out of sight at all times, understand?"

Elsa's eyes dart between her mother's tear-filled eyes and her father's eyes glistening with rage, and she nods.

"What about you, daddy?"

"I...I'll stall them until- until- you're safe," he starts, before pushing the backdoor open.

As the door swings open, searing light burns into Elsa's eyes, sending her falling from the fury of its blinding rays. At once, she feels a pair of gloved hands drag her from the floor. Amidst the tousling and pushing, Elsa feels her hands slip from her mother's, and the separation sends a surge of panic through her tiny body.

"_Mommy!_" Elsa screams, grabbing and flailing at everything within reach. The blunt force of her head colliding with the ground feels like a bomb going off in her face, but worse to come is the sight greeting her when she opens her eyes.

She's seen them before, the men dressed in black, standing on street corners with things perpetually strapped to their arms known as _guns_. Three of them stand over mommy and daddy, pointing the guns at their heads. The burning light ceases its blinding effect on Elsa, instead turning the scene into something so _unreal, _she could've sworn she's in a nightmare.

But this is no nightmare: not the noise of dogs and helicopters, or the deafening bang of the men's guns, or the crimson pool of mommy and daddy's blood on the grass. Every muscle in her body twitches at the sight of the _guns _lining up for another burst of fire and noise. Elsa screams and screams until her lungs bleed and the grass beneath her turns to ice. She lurches towards her parents' motionless bodies lying facedown on the ground, but the hands holding her maintain their vice-like grip.

The spray of bullets tearing through their corpses sends her into a blinding rage; she whirls around and jams her fists into the soldier. Immediately, a warm liquid sprays her face as he jerks away, clutching at the icicles embedded into his torso. Elsa wipes her eyes and shrieks at the blood on her hands. On the floor, the soldier's body convulses violently before going still; his icy wounds still gurgling blood. At the sight of their comrade's death - the other soldiers surround her with shields and point their guns at her.

"No! No! _No!_" Elsa screams, hurling icy darts at them. The ice clatters against their shields, shattering into tiny crystals and adding to the already frost-strewn lawn. Elsa screams and throws ice until the sweat drips from her face in icy crystals, and she slumps to her knees, heaving from the fire burning in her lungs. Her tiny fingers bunch up around fistfuls of frozen grass, and she chokes back a sob at the thought that somehow _this was all her fault._

"I'm sorry mommy, I'm sorry daddy," she mutters, refusing to look at the soldiers before her, "I...I shouldn't have-"

"Yes, you should have," a voice wafts into her ears, deep and slow, dripping with darkness.

Elsa tilts her tear-stained chin to the source and stares into a pair of green eyes hovering over her. His name slips from her lips right as her fists turn to ice.

"President Hans," Elsa mutters; her entire body tingling with electricity at his voice. The imposing man with red hair kneels to her height, unafraid of the ice in her hands or the dead soldier behind her.

"You're...you're magnificent," Hans whispers, running his fingers along Elsa's frozen face and tasting the frost, "_real ice._"

Elsa knows she should kill him, for everything he's done to her and her parents - but every muscle in her body refuses to budge under the magnetism of his eyes. Her face scrounges up in a concerted effort to resist the drone of his voice boring into her skull. Hans stares into the little girl's eyes and locks her gaze onto his, beckoning her to stand and follow him. With every passing second, Elsa feels more and more of her consciousness slipping away into his invisible grasp, until her thoughts fade away into the hypnotic hold he has over her.

A faint thought slips into her mind: the memory of Sally and her golden hair gleaming in the sun, the rush of blood to her face when she kissed her, for no particular reason other than to know what it felt like. Elsa bites on her lower lip as the thought of this man having something to do with Sally's disappearance makes sense in her mind.

With a grunt, Elsa uses the last strand of free will left within her soul to freeze her brain solid - locking Hans out of her mind and cutting off his hypnotic gaze.

"Fuck," he hisses, raising his hand high in the air.

The sting of his fist colliding into her face feels _blissful_ compared to the horror she's just experienced, and when the soldiers start beating her with batons, Elsa hopes the pain will make her forget. However, it doesn't, but she doesn't resist when they cuff her hands and put a bag over her head. In the darkness, she surrenders to the fury of their fists and boots, allowing them to drag her wherever their cruel intentions desire.

A smirk forms on little Elsa's bloodied lips as she thinks to herself - _you can kill me, but I still didn't give in to you. _


	2. Birth

Stained with ash, the young lady's red hair flutters in the wind as she stirs awake from the bitter cold slicing into her face. Through her watery eyes, Anna forces a weak smile at the other workers, young and old alike piled onto truck like cattle, on the way to another day at work in the metal factory. Her slender fingers grip around the only source of heat available: a steel canteen filled with weak tea - so weak she's given up lying to herself that the taste is pleasant to her, and admitted she's lugging it around for warmth's sake.

Through Anna's sleep-fogged gaze, a man old enough to be her grandfather looks over his shoulders before peeling a pinch of black tar from wax paper and stuffing it into his mouth. The smell of his tobacco-lined breath reaches her, and she whiffs at the air, hoping it could carry her somewhere else.

_"Arendelle thanks Grimfold's workers for their war efforts! Every tank built, every ship launched, every plane flown is a step towards our final victory!" _

The noise of blaring loudspeakers pulls Anna from her haze. The criss-crossing coils of barbed wire passing over the truck reminds her how close she is to the factory, and another day of hard labor. With a squeak, the truck shudders to a halt in the muddy road, and the workers groan at having their naps interrupted. One by one, they file out and pass through the factory gates and under the careless glances of the security guards. The nagging ache in Anna's forehead fails to leave despite the rush of warmth from the foundries, and the weight on her head drags her sight to the floor, where she grimaces at her hole-ridden boots, held together by scraps of leather. These would have to do for now, until winter sets in and snow starts piling the streets.

The cawing of crows pulls Anna's gaze to the sky, before settling upon the larger than life portrait of President Hans perched beneath the roof, flanked by a pair of soldiers in black trenchcoats and motorcycle helmets. Like the pair of Hans's green eyes which stared at her from every direction, the soldiers could see everything happening on the factory floor. The nudge of a truncheon on her shoulders shatters the temporary idyll of Hans's eyes, and Anna comes face to face with a burly security guard nearly twice her size.

"What'cha got in the bag? Ain't no contraband in there eh? Don't mind if I have a look?" he growls. Anna grimaces at the smell of salted herring on his breath, and she turns away from his imposing presence brushing up against her. Without waiting for a reply, the guard snatches her bag and begins rummaging through what little she brought to work.

"Blimey! I knew there was somefink in 'ere!" the guard scowls, pulling out a stack of roughed-up papers.

"They're just production drawings-" Anna starts, before she's cut off by the man's brutesque voice.

"Have you been writing?" he snarls, enunciating the action like it was a vulgarity. At the mention of the word _writing_, blood drains from Anna's face and she waves her hands in protest.

"No, no! I swear I haven't been writing sir, I don't even know how to read-"

"How about we take you to the _police_ and let em' decide eh?" the man hisses, drawing the attention of a few workers around them.

Anna recoils at his threat and her trembling intensifies, "Oh god no, not the police!"

Suddenly, the guard's fearsome demeanour melts as he spots a worker jostling his way through the morning crowd. A smile crosses Anna's face as the man comes into view, and she saunters behind his shoulders.

"Kristoff!" the guard exclaims, shaking his hand warmly before stuffing them into his pocket, "Always knew I could count on you to save a damsel in distress."

"C'mon, you know she wasn't carrying anything readable," Kristoff says, holding up Anna's drawings. Page after page of diagrams flip before his eyes, and he dismisses them with a wave of his baton.

"Ah, Kristoff," Anna sighs in relief, "y-you know you didn't have to save me - he would've let me off anyway. I mean, it's not like I'd be caught bringing _books_ to work or anything. _Whew,_ that would be _stupid!_"

"I didn't do that for nothing, you know. We need you in one piece for the big move later," Kristoff retorts.

"Oh, so _that's _how it is?" Anna scowls, crossing her arms, "no friendship, no favors, just need me around to move your shit?"

"C'mon, you know I'm joking," Kristoff laughs, wrapping an arm around Anna's shoulder and pulling her towards the shipyard, where her work for the day awaits.

"No, please! I'd rather get locked up!" Anna protests, giving a few light-hearted jabs at Kristoff's chin.

* * *

"Are you ready?" Kai yells over the din of roaring exhaust pipes. Before the crew of weary-eyed workmen lie a behemoth of a ship's engine: three tonnes of solid steel crafted into a amalgamation of interconnecting pipes and valves. The workmen groan in misery as Kai hooks a chain to the engine and yanks it tight. A cavernous pit sits beside the engine block, waiting to be fed its meal of twisted metal for today. The men cling to their helmets with bone-thin fingers as they listen to Kai explain in simple terms - how they're supposed to move the engine into the ship's belly.

"I need the tallest of the men down in the pit ready to align the engine block once it comes down, the rest of you - go up to the winch and pull with all your goddamned strength!"

Anna groans as Gerda passes through the crew and begins pushing people off to their respective lifting stations. She knows she'll be given no quarter as a girl - the men expect her to work every bit as hard as they do. But there's no point arguing with the people who've grown to be like family to her.

"Anna, you ok?" Kai asks, pulling her from her thoughts. The red-haired girl gives a nod of assent and joins Kristoff as they trudge the two stories of aluminium scaffolding to the winch.

"You know, you don't have to do this if you don't want to," Kristoff says, "Kai and Gerda can't see you from here."

"Oh _please_," Anna says, waving her friend off, "skip this and leave it up to you ladies? You'll be hauling this til' tomorrow!"

The men around her let out a half-hearted laugh as they take up their positions. A few of the older ones wrap rags around their calloused palms, knowing all too well how easily rusty chains chafe the skin under heavy loads. Kristoff and Anna opt for nothing more than brute strength, hoping the ordeal will be over as soon as it starts.

Peeking over the railings, Anna spots Kai and the other men getting ready to shift the engine into the pit. A whistle sounds and a chorus of grunts fill the air as the men put their backs into the chain. Despite the combined strength and weights of half a dozen workmen, the engine barely lifts by a foot, and Kai exhorts them to pull harder.

"Jesus, fuck," Kristoff hisses, "did they fill this with lead?"

Amidst the chain's clinking and the men's gruntings, Anna finds herself struggling to keep up; she wants to put every bit of herself into the work before her, even if it's just to alleviate their hardship by a fraction. Gritting her teeth, she crushes her grimy fingers around the rusty metal and pulls as hard as she can until acid seeps into her forearms. The sound of boots scraping the iron platform provides scant encouragement to the half dozen men putting their backs into the chain as it moves inch by inch over the pit.

"C'mon! Just a bit more and we can clear the railing!" Kai's voice calls from the pit, barely a whisper amidst the din of machinery around them.

Anna's joints creak under the strain; sweat drips from her chin and onto the rusty chains. In an attempt to rid the perspiration seeping beneath her eyelids, Anna raises her eyes skywards. The searing glare of the noon sun burns into her corneas, and nausea begins to overwhelm her senses. Her head spins; in her giddiness the noise of the chain snapping reverberates through her eardrums like a gun going off.

"_Shit!_" Anna shrieks, as the crew collapses to the ground, broken chain sliding through the pulley as it's dragged down by three tonnes of steel.

In the split second thereafter, she watches as the engine plummets towards the men standing in the pit, each one of them with wives and children she could remember by name. There was Kai too, the foreman who never said a harsh word to her despite her weakness and always let her work overtime without her asking. The factory would write this off as another bad accident, and some man from the authorities would pay his condolences for their sacrifice at the funeral, complete with starched white coffins and stoic faced women beneath the ever-present portrait of President Hans.

_And in a few weeks this would happen again._

It takes another split second for a blinding rage to bubble within the pit of her stomach, rage at the cruelty she witnesses everyday – anger at the hardship even the youngest of the citizens are forced to endure, at the restrictions and the rules and the senseless oppression. The rage boils over in her veins; she leaps to her feet and grabs the broken section of chain still flying through the air.

The first sensation she feels is her feet sinking an inch into the platform and her fingers leaving a dent in the chain like it was made of butter. She gasps at the sight of the engine hovering over the pit, and the realisation sinks into her belly at the same time she notices the fallen workmen staring at her with jaws wide open. She expects to feel pain, see her dismembered arm flying through the air, or some gruesome sight she's witnessed happen so often to careless workers, but instead - there's _nothing. _Just the steady clinking of the tensioned chain bunched in her fist, and the creak of the engine swaying beneath. Anna searches through her mind for something to say, _anything _that could distract the men staring at her.

"Um, guys? _I could probably use some help right now?_"

* * *

Despite the sooty steam wafting through the air from the kitchens, the chill in the air fails to lift for the factory workers hunched around long tables during the lunch break. Seated at the foot of a table with her tea flask for company, the girl with ash-stained red hair shifts around in her chair as she counts away the seconds to the end of lunch. There are days when the growling in Anna's stomach would be so severe that even the stench of factory food wouldn't be enough to stop her from tearing into her lunch. Today however, her disgust wins out, leaving Anna staring at her bowl of oat porridge while she swirls a spoon around the sloppy mess in the bowl.

Across her, Kristoff wolfs down his meal, all the while casting glances to his left and right. He senses more than one pair of eyes looking in Anna's direction, and refrains from asking her about the feat she pulled off earlier. Kristoff winces when Anna puts down her spoon and he sees the angry gash where the chain had cut into her palms.

"How's your hand-" Kristoff starts, before another worker sets his lunch next to him, and begins shovelling the slop into his mouth.

Anna casts a glance at the man, before staring into Kristoff's eyes with _that _look; the expression every man, woman, and child in Grimfold knows.

_Someone's watching, someone's listening. _

"I beg your pardon?" Anna replies, placing her palms downwards on the table.

"Sorry, I meant - how's your lunch? No appetite?" Kristoff asks, gesturing at her oats.

Anna sighs and shakes her head, pushing her bowl towards him. The frown on her face is quickly replaced by a smirk as a clinking sound reaches her ear, and she spots the glint of a brass pepper mill.

"Maybe some spice will help it go down," Kristoff says, grinding black powder onto her porridge. Anna's eyes light up at the heady scent hitting her nostrils, and she tucks into her meal without hesitation.

At once, the pain in her palms fades away, replaced by a numbness that stretches to the weariness in her soul.

* * *

Hunched between diesel generators, Anna takes another drag on her cigarette; she exhales a woody stream of tobacco smoke into the generator's exhaust as Kristoff lights up beside her.

"So, that was some shit you pulled off just now," Kristoff says, his voice barely rising over the drone of chugging motors. He looks over his shoulders; seeing nothing but rows and rows of machinery, he relaxes and slumps to the floor.

"I don't know," Anna slurs, bloodshot eyes glistening in the flicker of her cigarette, "maybe the chain got stuck-"

"That engine weighed at least three tonnes, anything it got caught on would've been ripped to shreds. I've seen someone's shoulders get torn off beneath that kind of weight."

"My shoulders are fine," Anna says, staring at her hands, "these would take awhile to get better though."

"I don't think it's your hands you should be worried about," Kristoff replies, peeking over the corner of the generator again.

Anna sighs and shuffles her feet, a sense of dread settles upon her head, and the corners of the plant room begin closing in on her faster than she can remind herself she's safe. Needing a respite from the fear, she inhales deeply on the cigarette and allows the opiate-laced tobacco smoke to swirl around in her lungs, before exhaling it.

"You think anyone noticed?" Anna whispers, almost afraid that just uttering the words would get her hauled off.

"They noticed, for sure – but whether anyone's going to do something about it is another matter," Kristoff says, "at least you didn't do that in Arendelle."

A raspy giggle bursts from Anna's throat in a puff of smoke, "_Arendelle?_ I'd have disappeared before lunch! There's too many of us here for _them _to care what goes on."

"No one gives a shit about us, and maybe that's for the best," Kristoff says, looking over his shoulders.

"You ever think about going to Arendelle, and leaving this shithole behind?" Anna asks, the faintest spark of hope flashing across her eyes, before it's smothered by the never-ending fumes of diesel exhaust.

"I'm not good enough to get a place on the train," Kristoff says, looking at his worn-out boots, "besides, I doubt I'd ever learn to read even if they allowed me to."

Anna's gaze drifts to Kristoff. Beneath the smoky fog wafting through the room, his cheeks take on a cherry red glow. She bites on her lip as she wonders whether this is everything her life was meant to hold.

"You have a shot at going," Kristoff says, snapping Anna from her thoughts, "you're strong, you're smart, you've always wanted to read."

"I don't think I can handle being watched around the clock, I'm wound up enough as it is after what happened just now."

"Relax! We look after each other here, no one's going to rat on you!" Kristoff says, "Especially not when it's likely you'll be doing all the heavy lifting for us-"

The sight of Kai and Gerda lurching into view sends the pair leaping to their feet. Instinctively, they throw their cigarettes far away from themselves, the stubs' embers casting an arc through the smoke.

"What the hell are you two doing here at this hour-" Kai starts, before shaking his head and pointing at Anna, "never mind, we need to talk."

At Kai's intense stare in their direction, Kristoff puts an arm around Anna's shoulder, but the girl edges forward with her head held high.

"Talk about what? I'm not afraid!" Anna says, crossing her arms, "Whatever happened, happened, and I'm, um, ready for - whatever to happen next!"

"Look, if it's true," Gerda points at Anna's arms, "this could mean very well for the factory, and it'd be in our favor to keep you here with increased rations for your family-"

At the phrase _increased rations, _Anna's eyes light up beneath the fog.

"But there's something far more important we need to talk about," Kai says, "the Party is coming tomorrow."

Kristoff and Anna recoil from their words, "_The Party? _You mean President Hans?"

Gerda nods, "Yes, they're visiting Grimfold, and the factory is on their itinerary. You've seen it happen before."

At once, the noise of screaming peasants and frantic applause at the sound of President Hans's voice floats through Anna's memory. She doesn't know why the very mention of _Party Visit _holds such sway over her, but she remembers each and every one like it happened yesterday. The anthems, the fanfare, the magnetic gaze of the President's shiny green eyes which looked directly at her no matter where she stood in the crowd.

"I..._I would very much like to go_," Anna says, unable to comprehend exactly _why_ the words left her lips.

"We think it'd be better if you don't," Gerda says, her voice deepening to a drone, "they might know about you, the Party always knows-"

"What?"

"In fact," Kai says, "it'd be better if you don't turn up for work at all tomorrow; see it as your only chance of staying alive."


	3. Death

_Elsa? _The voice drifts to her ears, slow and melodic, like a feather's descent.

"I'm here, I'm listening," she whispers, "I know your name."

_No you don't, _the voice answers, _I don't have a name. _

"You're the voice that comforts me in my dreams," Elsa whispers.

_One day you'll find that comfort isn't enough anymore. _

"What else, then? Other than comfort, what can help me through my wretched existence?"

The voice pauses, as if ethereal beings needed time to think, before whispering into her ear,

_Wake up, Elsa. _

* * *

The blonde girl sits upright in her mattress and clutches at her forehead, trying to rub away the vivid last words still echoing through her mind. Elsa hesitates to open her eyes, unsure of what would be in front of her when she really wakes; she has a habit of breaking into uncontrollable fits of shaking at the first light of morning. No matter how hard she tries, she can never rid the images which flash across her eyes in that moment between sleep and wake when all is white and she's blinded to the world.

With trepidation in her bones, Elsa eases her eyelids open and stares at the thin, slate grey cotton blanket on her knees. Nothing's changed in her jail cell of a room, not the floor to ceiling mirror or the translucent windows or the steel fixtures. The pitch-like darkness radiating from her window reminds her it's still hours before dawn. Elsa heaves a sigh of relief and contemplates crashing back into the mattress, hoping the voice would come back and whisk her away somewhere else. Anywhere would be better than where she'd have to go next.

But she doesn't, as a knock on the door turns her mouth dry and sends her heart into a spiralling flutter downwards.

"M'lady?" A girl's voice floats in through the keyhole; sweet and sharp, almost _too _good at concealing the poison in her blood.

"Yes, please come in-" Elsa slurs, before wondering whether she really meant it, or something she said out of habit.

A young girl dressed in a cherry pink dress with her brown hair braided in pigtails enters carrying a tray.

"Your breakfast is ready, ma'am," the girl says, keeping her eyes away from Elsa's disaffecting gaze as she sets the tray down on the dresser table.

Elsa shifts her weight off the bed and seats herself for breakfast. In the corner of her eye, she sees the girl standing behind her, the blues in her eyes glinting beneath the dim nightlight.

"Have you eaten, little girl?" Elsa asks, chewing on a slice of honeyed toast and ignoring the pills nestling in the corner of her tray.

"Yes ma'am," the girl says, before resuming her watchful oversight on Elsa's breakfast.

As the last drops of strong, black coffee disappears down Elsa's throat, she takes a moment to steal a glance at the girl's eyes through the mirror. At once, the girl drops her gaze to the floor, avoiding Elsa's. _Alive, _Elsa thinks, reminiscing on what little life she saw in her eyes, _she's not dead inside like the others. _Elsa flicks the tray aside and motions for the girl to remove it.

"You haven't eaten your pills, ma'am," the girl whispers, pointing at the little compartment on the tray.

Elsa's eyes drop to the carpet as her fingers hesitate on the polished steel's edge. After years of state-enforced medication, she knows the pills by color. Green makes her awake, puts life and energy into her. Blue mellows her out, lets her see things from a different perspective. Red makes her agree to anything she's told, even if she's forced to do unspeakable things. Usually the pills come in pairs, one of each color. Sometimes they're blue and green, sometimes blue and red.

_Today they're both red. _

"What will happen if I don't take them?" Elsa says, ignoring the cameras in the ceiling.

The girl shakes her head, her pigtails swaying to and fro. In the deathly silence of the room, Elsa hears a word reverberate from the bottom of her throat. She thinks she means to say, "_please", _but allows herself to imagine otherwise.

"They'll kill you, won't they?" Elsa asks, steeling her heart for the girl's answer.

"If I'm lucky, yes," the girl says without hesitation. Immediately, Elsa's heart plummets, she bunches her fist in her nightgown, and a chill surges through her bones. A _real _chill, the kind that causes death and destruction.

"And if you're not?" Elsa asks, unsure of whether or not she wants to hear the answer.

The girl lifts her eyes to the four cameras in the ceiling; her voice breaks into a tremble, "Please, ma'am, I have three sisters in Grimfold, they know about them, about my parents too-"

With a swipe of her hand, Elsa picks up the pills and stuffs them into her mouth. She swallows them without question, like she's done countless times. The gulp of pills going down Elsa's throat is superseded by the more-than-audible sigh of relief from the girl as she clears the tray.

"Get out," Elsa scowls, her hands beginning to tremble beneath her surrender to the all-encompassing will of the state. She knows the girl has done nothing wrong, it was merely misfortune that she was assigned here, but at the moment the prospect of being led where she'd rather not is too much to bear.

"The team is ready for you, ma'am," the girl whispers, before ducking out the door, "outside."

As the door clicks shut behind the girl's feet, Elsa dresses herself in blackened military fatigues beneath the ever-watchful gaze of the cameras she's grown accustomed to. As the suede touch of leather closes in over Elsa's hands, she catches herself doing it in a robotic fashion, like she _isn't_ the one dressing herself, but some unseen force moving through her hands. The familiar panic of losing autonomous control over her senses sends her spinning to face the mirror.

A pale face greets her, gaunt and haunted; if she couldn't recognise this face before she took the pills, she sure as hell couldn't recognise this face now. The electric blues in her eyes from her childhood have faded into a shade of grey, and with it – a loss of her own identity. A tremble courses through her fingers as she touches them to her face, expecting to sense a chill pass into her cheek, but feeling _nothing_.

No more fear, no more anxiety, not even the gnawing loneliness which closes in on her every night. All replaced by a foreboding sense of pure, unadulterated _obedience_.

Elsa leaves her room and walks straight out the front door of her house. She feels numb too, to the chill morning air, and the din of helicopter blades churning up blades of grass from her front lawn. The noise reverberates against the plexiglass fence build around her house, and the helicopter's searchlights swivel to face her the moment she steps foot on the gravel pavement.

Without so much as flinching from the sight of soldiers or dogs onboard the helicopter, Elsa clambers onto the aircraft and buckles herself into an empty seat automatically, the emptiness in her eyes betraying her true intentions. She listens carefully to the commander through the speakers, allowing the words _kill or capture, pre-dawn raid_, _suspected resistance member, _and _heavily armed_ to float through her ears and sink into her brain. She pretends to take note of the house's blueprints placed in her lap, so identical to the dozens of others she's seen before, since all houses in Arendelle were one and the same.

The helicopter's descent and the cessation of radio chatter reminds her how close she is to the horror's she's about to inflict. With sullen faces and gritted teeth, the men cock their guns and tighten their grasps on their dogs' leashes; Elsa wonders if they're meant for their target this morning, or if they're really meant for her in case the drugs weren't enough; she'll find out in a minute anyway.

With all the ceremony of a taxicab pulling up at a rank, the helicopter lands on their target's lawn and Elsa disembarks. She saunters down the garden path with blades of grass whipping up around her feet and men scampering behind her, guns drawn and dogs ready to kill. Despite the chill morning air, perspiration drips from her face as she steps up to the door and rings the bell. Why she rang the doorbell before knocking, she hasn't the slightest clue; perhaps a vestigial figment of her free will hopes it'll give the people inside enough time to kill themselves before they see her.

_No answer. _The shaking in Elsa's hands steadies to a calm as she removes her gloves and touches the knob. Instantly, the metal freezes over and shatters when she jams her weight against the door. The warmth greeting her face is immediately replaced by an ear-splitting hail of noise as a shadowy figure opens fire at her.

Specks of icy dust explode around Elsa as each bullet slams into a wall of frost. The man shooting at her, unkempt from weeks on the run, empties his magazine and hurls the rifle at the soldiers in an attempt to flee. Elsa strolls through the living room, her feet clinking through the mess of icy bullets her powers had stopped in mid-air. Tendrils of fog swirl from Elsa's footsteps, sprouting into icy hounds; each one of their feral eyes glinting with darkened ice. The dogs tear through the house; snowy snouts seeking out her prey from within the shadows lurking in every corner.

A chorus of howling echoes through the darkness of the house, followed by a shriek. The crash and clatter of furniture is proceeded by an ominous silence signalling a quick end to the man's ensuing struggle. With blood dripping from their fangs, Elsa's wolves drag her victim into the living room and deposit him at her feet.

"You won't...you won't get away with this-" he snarls, clutching at the bloody stump where his ear used to be.

"Where are the others?" Elsa asks, the words rolling off her tongue like they have a thousand times before.

"I'd rather die!" he shrieks, yanking a cord from inside his jacket. At once, a half-dozen grenades come into view, and the soldiers recoil from the sight.

"_Shit-_" the men yell in unison.

The hiss of fuses is halted by a fizzle as the metal-shrouded explosives crackle from frost, hardening them into icy lumps. Elsa's victim stares at his newest defeat, and the frustration sends him slumping to his knees. Ice sprouts from Elsa's feet, extending towards the man in jagged, misshapen shards of thorny icicles.

_Kill or capture,_ the mission objectives resonate through her brain, _my job here is done._ Elsa turns from the man and leaves him to the mercy of the soldiers and their dogs. She pretends not to hear the screams behind her as the men descend upon their hapless prisoner with studded truncheons. The faintest whispers of her own free will begin to filter back through the fog of medicated subservience, and Elsa darts out of the house as quickly as her feet can carry her, lest she still be around to hear his cries and realise what atrocity she has done. She doesn't, because the man's screams drown out even the incessant thumping of the helicopter's engines.

_Monster, _a voice within her gnaws at her conscience; _the least you could've done was kill him._

While she limps away from the scene of the raid, blood comes away from Elsa's thigh as she reaches for her gloves. The aching in her right leg is overwhelmed by the stabbing pain in her heart as the drugs begin to wear off and the realisation sinks into her head; she struggles to keep her head upright beneath the guilt crashing down on her. Elsa's hair shimmers beneath the rays of sunlight piercing through the clouds as the helicopter leaps into the sky and a single, gleaming tear trickles down her pale cheek, but she tells herself it's just the morning wind's chill.

* * *

The ticking of a grandfather clock intensifies the thumping in Elsa's head; she clutches at the crude bandage knotted around her thigh, her other hand wrapped firmly around a bottle of vodka. Elsa bites on her lower lip and tries freezing over her wound again. A sheen of ice coats her thigh, but the pain still sears through her flesh right into her bones.

"_Fuck,_" Elsa grimaces, taking another glug of vodka and hoping she'd pass out from the pain, or alcohol. She squints at the watch on her wrist, dotted with beads of sweat, counting down the seconds. Just _needing_ something to distract herself from the pain, she estimates the number of sips of vodka left in her bottle before she has to reach for another – but the burn of alcohol reaching her stomach sends all trace of logic in her brain into a blur.

Neither the alcohol nor the clock-watching does anything to soothe Elsa's agony, but the sound of the door opening sends her heart soaring.

"Oh Christ!" a figure exclaims from the doorway. Clad in a white cloak, the woman with short-cropped brown hair races over to Elsa's body reclining on the couch and wipes the sweat from her face.

"So...so...I'd have to get injured just to see you again huh?" Elsa's voice creaks. Even in her pain, she musters the strength to tip the woman's face to hers, just so she can look into her huge, green eyes - as though they were the last things on earth which mattered to her.

"You know I'd visit you if I could," she says, averting her gaze from Elsa's and resuming her inspection of her friend's wounds. Skillful fingers undo her bandages, and the brunette doesn't flinch when her bullet wound comes into view.

"What was it?" she asks.

"I got shot on an op," Elsa snarls, "doesn't usually happen."

"Must be the drugs he makes you take, they don't work all the time."

The lady purses her lips and blows the softest whisper across the ugly gash in Elsa's thigh. Rays of gleaming light radiate from her skin, before she covers it with her hand. At once, warmth blossoms across Elsa's body; the shaking in her fists subsides into stillness, and her heart ceases its furious thumping.

"Better?" she asks, removing her hand. Besides the bloodstains, her skin now stands in its original state: pale, smooth, radiating every bit of youthful exuberance its owner used to possess.

"I g-got better the moment you w-walked through that door," Elsa whispers, giving the miracle on her leg a once-over, "did you get the letter I sent?"

"Elsa, you know the censors intercept our letters, why do you keep sending them?"

"Because I'm stupid enough to hope," Elsa chuckles, running her hands through the woman's hair.

"Look, bumps and bruises I can heal, but not broken hearts," she answers, "you've got to take it easy and stop being so hard on yourself."

A trio of soldiers in motorcycle helmets enter Elsa's house and stand by the doorway with guns drawn.

"I have to go," the lady says in a breaking voice, "they only let me see you because of your wounds."

"No! Please - when can I see you again?" Elsa gasps, grasping her friend's hands as a pulsating tremble returns into her own.

"If it's for circumstances like this, I hope we never meet again," she says, pulling Elsa into her arms and rubbing away the shaking emanating from the pit of her lungs, "_I don't want to lose you._"

As Elsa parts, she sees a smattering of ice on the lapels of her jacket. She wipes the half-frozen moisture from her cheeks, but it doesn't stop the tears from brimming in her eyes and spilling forth.

"I love you," Elsa whispers, the words barely movements of her lips.

"Don't make this difficult for me," she whispers. With a kiss on her forehead, the brunette rises and leaves the house under heavy escort. The sound of the door clicking shut feels like a tomb closing around her body. Like the rush of an incoming tide, pain returns to Elsa, but this time it burns into her heart.

With trembling lips, Elsa slumps back into the couch and stares at the cameras in the ceiling. Unwilling to bear with the torment of the unseen lenses boring into her skull, she shuts her eyes and jams her face into the velvet cushions, hoping no one's around to hear her weeping. Despite what she's said to her friend earlier, even hope deserts her - but the fuzzy blanket of alcohol from earlier fails to lift with it, and Elsa cries herself to sleep in a fog of shattered dreams.

* * *

_Elsa? _

The voice slithers into her ears, deep and dripping with poison. _Is this the voice in my dreams? _She ponders the intent of its question, before bolting upright in the couch and inhaling a deep breath that threatens to burst her lungs.

"What're you doing here?" Elsa snarls at the man seated across her; dressed in a starched white uniform with matching white gloves. Her fists turn to ice, but already the room begins to spin under the imposing aura his regal being possesses.

"Just checking on my favorite special girl-" he replies, pronouncing each syllable with the deliberation of a craftsman. With each second that passes, Elsa feels her entire _being_ pulled nearer and nearer to the source of his voice - like it was a magnet and she was made of iron.

"I'm- I'm fine, don't need you to check on me," Elsa scowls, shutting her eyes and trying to shake away the nausea settling upon her head, "Rapunzel took care of my wounds."

"Have you been crying, my love?" Hans asks, extending a gloved hand towards her cheeks. At once, Elsa edges herself away from his touch, and icy thorns emerge from her skin.

"It's nothing," Elsa says, reaching the couch's edge and holding a frozen hand in front of her, "w-what did you do with her? Why can't she come and see me?"

"I have plans for Rapunzel, just like I have plans for you and the others. We are special afterall - a chosen race of beings that will lift humanity into its next glorious age."

"No, I don't want any part of this," Elsa scowls, chilling the air around her to below freezing, "I j-just want a normal life, with freedom and friends."

"Pfft - people like yourself aren't worthy of any of the so-called _freedom_ the peasants enjoy," Hans snarls, slumping into a chair and rubbing his hands, "and neither do you deserve friends, since you're a danger to everyone and yourself."

"P-please, Hans-"

"In fact, Rapunzel's afraid of you - I can sense her fears a mile away," Hans smirks, his green eyes glowing a dull emerald in the dimness.

"What-"

"She's afraid you'll hurt her, because you're incapable of controlling your powers, unlike how much she's grown to be a part of hers."

Elsa's eyes widen; she sucks in a gasp and stares at the ice in her hands, "Did Rapunzel really say that?" Elsa asks.

"She doesn't have to, for me to know-" Hans mutters, pointing at his temples.

"Oh god," Elsa gasps, snowflakes blossoming from her eyes, "this can't...this can't be - I've tried so hard to contain myself and I...I just don't know how-"

Hans slithers next to Elsa and leans close to her ears. With each passing second intensifying the bubble of despair spilling from her eyes, she fails to stop the President from murmuring his magnetic voice into her ears.

"You need my help to control yourself - _just let me into your mind_."

The touch of his lips to her ears sends a wave of panic surging through her body; Elsa freezes her brain solid and leaps to her feet.

"Stop it," she snarls, holding a frozen hand in front of herself, "I'll never let you in. Never!"

"Suit yourself," he hisses, before stomping towards the door.

Elsa slumps into the couch and buries her face in her hands. With her brain still frozen solid, all the blood in her body rushes towards her heart, threatening to burst under the strain of Hans's revelation.

"One more thing, I'm going to Grimfold tomorrow," Hans's voice calls out from the door, "the peasants need their dosage of me and you're coming along, _whether you like it or not._"


	4. Desire

Another foggy breath leaves Anna's lips as she leans against the remnants of a bombed-out school. A chill passes through her hands again, and she rubs them together in the cold to no avail. Darting her eyes left and right, she resumes looking at the child across the dirt track struggling to lift a wagon from the muddy road. No older than ten, the child winces as he heaves his starved frame into the wood behind, while the emaciated excuse of a horse pulls on the yoke in front.

The noise of a rumbling truck growls in Anna's ears, she spots a vehicle loaded with soldiers and slinks behind the pillar, waiting for it to pass. Rows of bayonets bristle in the air like a porcupine as the truck slows down beside the boy with the stuck cart, before turning a corner into another street. Anna emerges from the shadows and scampers across the dirt track, looking over her shoulders every step of the way.

"Do you need some help, little one?" Anna asks, rolling up her sleeves.

A pair of amber eyes set amidst a dirt-caked face looks up at Anna, and he nods. Anna stares at the wagon's wheels, buried axle-deep in the soft mud; she knows the boy would sooner die of exhaustion than shift his wagon an inch, and she wouldn't have blinked at his plight. People suffer everyday in Grimfold – it's too much to even pretend to care, let alone help someone.

_But I'm different now, _Anna thinks, casting one more glance over her shoulders. A tremble courses through her hands and she wonders if it's the cold – or something else. Gritting her teeth, she braces her shoulders to the wood as a squelching sound fills the air. At once, the cart lurches forward in a crescendo of neighing and crunching wood.

"Holy shit-" the boy shrieks, staring at the knee-high ditch where his cart's wheel used to be.

"Please try to keep this to-" Anna starts, before a hand slamming onto her shoulder sends her heart into a tailspin. She whirls around on her feet expecting to find the gruff face of a policeman ready to drag her to prison – but sighs in relief at the sight of Kristoff's deep brown eyes.

"What the hell are you doing? You aren't supposed to be here," he says.

"I-I don't have a choice," Anna says, "food's been tight this month, and I need all the help I can get."

"Well, you can't go in there pulling off stunts like these and expect to make it out in one piece," Kristoff says, pointing at the child happily riding his unstuck cart, "Kai and Gerda warned you about it."

"Oh _please_," Anna quips, "are you taking me for a fool?

* * *

_Each nail wrought is another nail in the enemy's coffins! Each bullet forged is another shot into the hearts of the intruder! Workers of Grimfold! Every hammer stroke we put into..._

The loudspeaker blaring its stream of propaganda fails to stir Anna's concentration from the bucket of red-hot metal held in her gloved hands. With the fiery liquid casting a glow on her freckled cheeks, she bites down hard on her lip and edges the concrete bucket towards the mould. Donning a pair of crude black glasses, Kristoff stands watch with a pair of tongs, ready to break apart the sand moulds once his partner's done casting the liquid metal.

Anna's arms flex under the weight as she tips the bucket into the mould. The ends of her hairs singe and glow with embers as the heat blossoms forth from the stream of super-heated white slithering before her eyes. With a grunt, she tips the last bits of red into the mould and Kristoff scrapes off what few drops are left after the casting.

"Alright!" Anna chirps, chucking the bucket by the furnace and removing her gloves, "That's the last damn bucket we'll be seeing for a long time!"

A grating noise reverberates through the casting chamber as Kristoff chips apart the sand mould , taking care to remove the completed turbine blade in one-piece. Its cherry-red glow casts a warm aura upon the two, and they take a moment to examine their newly completed masterpiece.

"Not bad huh?" Anna says, blowing off the ash settling upon the blade, "Maybe it'll even pass for-"

"What the hell is going on here?" a voice bellows between the pair. Kai shoves Kristoff aside and stares at the completed metal piece. His head cranes to the sight of an endless row of identical turbine blades and folds his arms.

"Was this yesterday's quota?" Kai asks.

Kristoff and Anna look at each other, before dropping their eyes to the ground and shaking their heads, _"No, today's."_

"Jesus, is this the aluminium batch?"

"No sir, it's the mild steel run for the ship's power plant-"

_"__Steel?_" Kai asks, staring at Anna's arms, still slick with perspiration from her hours of toil in the foundries, "But that's...impossible. It takes three men an hour to move the foundry bucket-"

_Impossible, _the word flutters through the girl's mind; the word which was thrown around her from the moment she was thrust into a miserable existence - impossible to read, impossible to ever feel full, impossible to breathe air that didn't stink of smoke and hopelessness. For once in her wretched life, Anna feels a tide of _possible_ rising up within her.

"It is what it is," Anna mutters, crossing her arms, "and I want to be paid fairly for the work I've done!"

"No shit, whatever I've promised you, the factory will pay," Kai says, before dropping his voice to a whisper, "but I warned you about the President's visit today."

"Oh god, no!" Anna cries, before clasping a hand over her mouth and looking over her shoulder, "I mean - great! When does it...um…start?"

"After lunch," Kai replies, pointing at the hands of a rusty clock rapidly approaching twelve, "make sure you're there, they'll be taking names."

* * *

Anna's stomach rumbles amidst the impatient muttering of a thousand workers gathered in the Factory's courtyard. The portrait of Hans overlooking the crowd had been polished to a gleaming sheen until it stands as the only clean object for miles; everything in Grimfold being coated with a layer of soot and grime. With the smell of acrid smoke still churning in her nostrils, Anna stares at the sky and mutters expletives into the stale, October air.

An ache pulsates through Anna's fingers and she wonders if it's from all the heavy lifting she's done today, or something else.

The anthem blares through the chill air like the roar of thunder, and the crowd surges forth with the intensity of a tsunami. Waves of shoulders crash into Anna; she braces her heels into the ground, but the crowd picks her up and carries her towards the focal point of its obsession: a row of violet flags signalling President Hans's entrance. Jammed against the barricades flanking the red carpet, the crowd's gleeful cheering quickly rises to a chrous of frantic screaming when the Presidential car approaches with Hans standing from the sunroof. President Hans waves to the workers and Anna jams her hands over her ears to stifle the deafening roar ensuing from the simple act.

On cue from the soldiers lined up by the podium, the crowd salutes President Hans with two fingers held up in the air as a symbol of their inevitable victory over the enemy. The hysteria sweeps Anna along in its feverish pitch, she throws her fingers in the air and shouts until her voice goes hoarse. So fervent are the crowd's adoration, that Anna never stops to question the sanity of it all.

Dressed in a crisp white uniform, President Hans steps on stage and salutes the crowd. A bristling heat sweeps across her skin when his eyes come to view. Despite her distance from him, she sees the two points of green as bright as the sun. Even when she looks away, the eyes follow her, searing themselves into her brain. Anna clenches her fists and tries to fight away the stare locked into her skull. An elbow grazes her face, its owner flinging a rose at the President. She recovers from the impact and jerks Kristoff's shoulders, but his glazed eyes are fixed to the front.

Finding no reply from her friend, she returns her weary gaze to the stage, and at once a gasp escapes her lips at the sight of another girl leaving the Presidential car. Dressed in black fatigues like the other soldiers, but with blonde hair left braided in a coil against her neck; the crowd ignores her presence as she stands behind Hans. Anna stares at the blonde with a clenching in her heart, she studies the girl's face and tries to discern some sort of emotion from her, expecting to find the same empty, hollow stares she's often seen in the eyes of battle-hardened soldiers.

Anna's heart begins to pound like a drum as she watches those blue eyes scan the crowd with weariness written in them. Amidst the frantic applause at Hans's every word, she hears her eyes crying for help. _She's not like the others. _

"Kristoff! Who's that girl?" Anna asks, her feeble voice drowned out by the roar of the crowd's applause.

"_Just another one of his guards,_" Kristoff mumbles without breaking his stare into Hans's eyes.

Anna searches for the words to describe her feelings. Being born into state-enforced illiteracy, and knowing only words like _work, eat, sleep_; she finds herself lacking the means to describe the tugging in her chest. The blonde girl was pulling her closer with each second she stood behind him, and she _wasn't even trying._

_Want. _Anna settles on a word. _She wants her. _

Thunderous ovation shatters the cocoon of desire in Anna's mind. The crowd surges forward as President Hans steps off the stage. Soldiers surround him with riot shields directed at the crowd, and he extends his hands through the gaps. A tidal wave of human bodies picks Anna up and carries her toward the front. Between the tousling and shoving, Anna tries to lift her head, desperate to get one more glance at the girl. Dozens of elbows brush past her face in their frantic attempt to get a touch of Hans's hands, as if some vibrant life force emanated from his being.

A woman's shoulder collides with her face. She buckles over, only to be swept upwards by the crowd's momentum. The mist from Anna's eyes clear, and she recovers enough of her consciousness to catch a glimpse of the girl's face. Tall and fair, the blonde girl sports a grimace as she jams her weight back at the crowd, trying to allow enough space for the soldiers to open the car door.

Anna's heart begins to pound as she realises how close the girl is. Amidst the deafening roar of voices, Anna sucks in a deep breath and reaches for her, without really wondering _why, _but only having the words _I want you _playing over and over in her head. Another person stumbles into her from behind. Anna falls forward. In the last seconds before the blonde girl disappears into the car, she grazes her fingers against her elbow.

A chill races up Anna's arm. She picks herself up and recoils from the sight of two eyes staring back at her from inside the tinted car windows; as blue as the clearest sky she's never seen, and as cold as the most frigid winter's night. The realisation that she's looking _right at her_ dawns upon Anna for a split second before the car speeds away. With nothing else left but the image of those blue eyes seared into her memory, Anna bunches up her fists into her grease-stained work pants and tries to _keep _as much of the chill as she can in them, wishing it'd never go away.

* * *

With her head hung low, Anna jams her aching fists into her pockets and continues strolling the mile-long walk back home. The sight of an emaciated child missing a leg and digging through the garbage heap catches her attention for a second, but this time all she can manage is a grimace before quickening her pace.

_I live in a shithole. So ugly, so foul and far from Arendelle. She's beautiful, perfect, and everything I am not. I'll never see her again and it's impossible she'd want anything to do with me. _

Anna shuts her eyes and shakes her head, trying to rid herself of those piercing blue eyes which stood for everything she desired in her life. But the image burns itself into her brain with such a ferocious intensity that the breath catches in her throat and she stops walking, slumping her heaving body against a tree trunk. The cold sweat slithers down her throat and she can hardly see through the foggy mist in her eyes. Her skin prickles from the heat rushing through her being.

_This is crazy, I don't even know her. She's just another one of the upper class, far away and foreign. But why is she making me feel this way?_

Unfamiliar with the pangs of desire eating away at her soul, Anna reaches into the pockets of her work clothes and fiddles around for a bit of sage-leaf, hoping that it could numb those feelings she's enduring now, like all the other weariness she's used to during winter nights. She peels off a thumbnail-sized lump of sage-leaf and places it under her mouth, and at once the narcotic bliss seeps into her jaw and illuminates her eyes.

The girl's visage disappears from the front of Anna's mind, fading into the background but still retaining the warmth that it brings to her skin. With the paralytic memory of the blonde girl's eyes gone, Anna regains her bearings and looks around her. She's on the path home, beneath the tree where she and Kristoff used to pluck apples when they were younger and still had apples to pluck. Now, the tree stands blackened and charred from when it was hit by one of those terror bombs that flew in randomly during the night. She peers behind the tree at the burnt out wreckage of a military truck, ostensibly the target of whoever was piloting the terror bomb.

Like the dawn fog, the drug enters Anna's bloodstream and seeps into her brain; she staggers amidst the bits of burnt metal and cringes at the stench of scorched rubber. The truck's cargo had been tipped over and emptied onto the soil, only to be consumed by the flames. Anna kicks at bits and pieces of burnt crates, sending a tin can clattering across the ground. A patch of white amidst the blackened wreckage catches her eye; she leans down and picks up a hard, dense object.

Anna shakes off the ash from the squarish object, and her eyes widen when the realisation dawns on her. She opens the book and a chill runs down her spine when she realises what it is. At once, she slams it shut and attempts to hurl it away from herself.

A pair of hands slam onto her shoulder before she manages to rid herself of the evidence, and she feels cold steel tightening around her wrists before she can utter a word of protest.


End file.
